June 25, 2009

How Green Were My Lost Jobs?

March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Subsidizing renewable energy in the
U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain’s
experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide.

For every new position that depends on energy price
supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear,
according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget proposal contains
about $20 billion in tax incentives for clean-energy programs.
In Spain, where wind turbines provided 11 percent of power
demand last year, generators earn rates as much as 11 times more
for renewable energy compared with burning fossil fuels.

The premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power -
- which are charged to consumers in their bills -- translated
into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created
since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the
university and author of the report.

“The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the
amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to
higher energy prices,” he said in an interview.

And while on the topic of forcing up energy costs, QandO notes that Waxman-Markey lays the foundation for a trade war. This is from the Times story to which he links:

A House committee working on sweeping energy legislation seems
determined to make sure that the United States will tax China and other
carbon polluters, potentially disrupting an already-sensitive climate
change debate in Congress.

The Ways and Means Committee's proposed bill language (pdf)
would virtually require that the president impose an import tariff on
any country that fails to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions.

Directed primarily at China, the United States' biggest
manufacturing competitor, the provisions aim to protect cement, steel
and other energy-intensive industries that expect to face higher costs
under a federal emissions cap. But associations that represent
importers and multinational corporations are raising red flags, warning
that the language could lead to trade wars, hurt the United States'
ability to export low-carbon technology and harm consumers.

Unfortunately, Paul, as P.T. Barnum said, "there's a sucker born every minute" and as long as there are snake oil salesmen and 3 card monty players out there, the Dems will be able to con the rubes.

The Republican politoracy seem to have a death wish of their own as they continue to implode.There would be one hell of a political satire to be written about it all except that it is tragedy for the country.

Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) “green jobs” policies it appears that Spain likely has created a surprisingly low number of jobs, twothirds of which came in construction, fabrication and installation, one quarter in administrative positions, marketing and projects engineering, and just one out of ten jobs has been created at the more permanent level of actual operation and maintenance of the renewable sources of electricity.

The study is an easy read and lays out a clear blueprint of how Spain effectively ruined its economy through tilting at windmills (Cervantes would undoubtedly be unsurprised). I'm sure that US idiots bureaucrats will be much more effective in destroying jobs than the Spanish could possibly dream of being.

Notice how those Spanish "green" jobs are 3/4 "shovel ready"? There one contract jobs for the most part, build it, and go home. Here's a check. Call me next week.

I'll be back in an hour and a half. A question came to mind, what percentage of the population paying quarterly taxes, switched to 100% owed from estimated in the last two quarters? I know of a few and it cut their payments in half. I'm trying to put (guess-timate) a percent on it, and the higher the tax bill, I would guess, the higher the probability of being "aggressive". Some thing to think about.

Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) “green jobs” policies it appears that Spain likely has created a surprisingly low number of jobs, in accordance with the predictions of conservatives everywhere.

"liquid coal delivered to your back door..Knock three times and say ,"Joe sent me," and the like."

I live in an older home which was originally heated with coal. There still remains a coal room and a coal chute. One day I was sweeping the coal room floor, whacked an asbestos-covered steam pipe overhead with the broom handle, glanced up to see if I'd done any damage, and emerged from the basement in black face.

No, but a more recent example is Clinton in 94.
And Obama's debt and spending dwarf even the New Deal. Debt as a percentage of GDP will exceed anything, ever in peace time.
I'd give PaulL's scenario a 50/50 shot.

Just being cheeky. Surprised that the GOP hasn't used the failures in Spain, Michigan, California, and the European Climate Exchange. All one needs to do is drive down I-580 to see the previous incarnation of windpower-a bunch of obsolete wind-turbines which cost millions to install and further millions to subsidize, killed off all the birds in the area, and still they produce less than .5% of peak electricity demand in CA-after more than 30 years of operation and being the largest concentration of wind turbines in the world.

True. But the GOP had a fairly disciplined operation, some reported Dem scandals (Post Office and House Bank-iirc), and an ideological coherence. We've got the weepy Gov. Sanford and Rep. Issa helping the Obama Administration sack Bernanke. We had 3 GOP members in the Senate stab the country in the back to pass the Obamulus bill. I hope we can muddle through, but I'm in my gloomy mood today.

I'm still waiting for Steele to do something other than channel Rodney King in the face of all these clusterfucks that Il Douche is serving up. I'll concede that Sanford's orgasm-addiction isn't his fault but just about every goddamn other thing where the message is important is all on him.

Hit on the other threaad is dead right on the dangerous distraction Jackson will have on any chance of debate on these things.

Add the Jackson Dianafication to the usual July nonsense in DC, and we are going to wake up with both Cap&Tax and Health Care done while nobody is paying attention. Facts just don't seem to matter, and a trillion here and there seems not to register. I grant you some small pushback is out there, but so far not nearly enough to stop them.

Over-reaching is not going to bite these guys, at least not before irreversable damage is done. The audacity of what they plan and with the economy in the balance is simply astounding.

I'm just back from a week on an unnamed northeastern island with my WS pals. They plan to make money robbing the corpses (as usual), but there is ZERO optimism for the long term, stock rally notwithstanding. And LOTS of talk about other currencies and havens for them.

Well, Rich, it looks like half of the Republican movers and shakers view Sarah as a bigger threat to their future than Obama's plans.

Pretty much. Jay Cost has an interesting piece where he lays out that she doesn't seem to be running for 2012 based on the fact that she hasn't filed to run for re-election for Governor. If she were not to run for re-election, I can't say I'd blame her. The ethics complaints are bankrupting her family, her teenaged children are in a fishbowl and media targets, and her own party thinks it is somehow a good idea to kneecap her. She's reformed the oil and gas severence tax and inked an agreement for the pipeline-she might believe that she's done what she was elected to do and return to private life. I hope she runs and would support a 2012 run for the Presidency, but I could more than understand if she were to take a pass.

Hope you're right and the ABC ratings for their Obama Hour might signal my gloom is misplaced. However, as OL stated above, the Dems have ready made media distrations in place and the Cap&Tax and Kill Granny Deathcare can be worked out in conference based on the budget outline passed.

Obama was able to pass and sign into law the once defeated S-CHIP expansion and not a complaint (and surprised S-CHIP isn't talked about in the health care debate, there is plenty of literature showing how that crowds out private insurance options and has become an ever growing line item in the federal budget).

Well, maybe but I don't think so, I know she's not focused on reelection, but doing her job visiting ANG troops in the Balkans, in the LUN, while Sanford was conducting
'foreign relations' down South. Obama was freeing another terrorist, and planning two vicodin ejections to the economy; cap n
trade, and the 'public option'. It does seem like the party seems on a much more self destructive jag than '94. Jay Cost wasn't that one of the ones who was attacking Rush for wanting Obama to fail.

If the economy keeps grinding down then the Dems "Cash for Trash" programs are likely to backfire. Don't forget the 40%/20% conservative/braindead split to go along with the continuing drop in the MSM and increase in hours on the computer.

I put no stock in any rumors that Governor Palin will not run. I'll have to hear her say it to believe it. The door is wide open and she is the pol best suited to take advantage of the situation.

Someone mentioned bankrupting with lawsuits. That's the exact tactic they used agains Matt Blunt, and also against Ameren UE. The big problem is, that most of the complainants are covered by whistle blower statutes, or whatever, so they bear no cost.

"A House committee working on sweeping energy legislation seems determined to make sure that the United States will tax China and other carbon polluters, potentially disrupting an already-sensitive climate change debate in Congress."

Damn, real live shootin'-an'-killin' wars have been started over less than what these All-American Congressional Idiots are proposing.

Don't see the point, she would have to take on Lisa Murkowski,in a primary, in order to be the pork queen, to be part of a clique of a hundred senators, without any real responsibility. Murkowski has been perfectly
useless on Sotomayor, she almost voted for the stimulus

SCHIP was "pre-run" and passed in Illinois, the cost and squeeze out was well advertised, and the one party legislature rammed it through. Oh, by the way, how much of that "guaranteed" coverage was crammed down onto private hospitals to make up for "shortfalls" of the public hospitals, care to bet 100%?

This is not new. I also like that the new "welfare " payments are up to $2000 a week. That'll speed up some of that deficit spending they so abhor.

Is that graven in stone somewhere? The QE dough isn't going into the economy AFAICT. Ants have already put away more in savings than the total misappropriated for Porculus.

I can see a bottom in Q4 '09 but I don't see any reason for an upturn. I just don't believe that enough weight is being given to the fact that the 45-60 year old cohort must increase their saving rate in order to rebuild retirement accounts. Uncle Ben's QE isn't fixing that little conundrum and the Ogabe Regime's "Cash for Trash" efforts are clearly aimed at feeding the locusts and starving the ants.

Frankly, I think the comments about EPA being painted as the bad guy should AGW be discredited are spot on. EPA has set itself up as a future “village idiot,” which will help the politicians to no end should they need to unwind the politics of AGW if facts on the ground create "AGW quicksand.”

Rick, I can't find anything to disagree with in your previous comment. It just would be nice if we had a GOP with a coherent message. I can do without the slovenly media coverage of every GOP scandal and equally loathsome media coverage of a bankrupt and washed-up entertainer.

but then remember that the Obaulus is funded to front money in 2010 and the econony can't keep dropping all through 2010. Right?

Of course it can. I can think of 800 billion reasons why it will. The word I hear from insiders is that most of the money under Porkulus is going into a channel that is already completely sold out with work. There are only so many road, bridge and frisbee-park contractors in the country. It's going to be less than useless, and will have absolutely no effect on the economy this year, or next.

Global warming ended in 1998. Global cooling started in 2007. Democrats are insane.

No real argument on your last assertion (other than it's a tad too general) but I think it's too early to say it has 'ended' based on a leveling of the upward slope over 30 years of rise (actually, a rise since the mid 1800s). Using graphs to linearly project is always risky and is better left to the Gorebots.

Actually, the warming is not in question for most scientists, it's the cause of the warming that has yet to be adequately settled, despite the table pounding from Obama, EPA, NOAA/NASA and delinquents like James Hansen. They just don't know precisely how much is human-induced, yet later today the US Congress will boldly proclaim on a piece of paper that they have the power to change the earth's climate by simply taxing people. Unreal.

Well, if the warming doesn't fit the C02 model, it's a little hard to say any of it is human-produced. We know the earth warmed at the beginning of the 20th century before the automobile took off, etc. The models are filled with noise and hooey; they are so far from being back-testable as to render them utterly meaningless. Moreover, a far more reasonable explanation for the relationship between warming and CO2 is the reverse of Hansen's: CO2 rises as a result of warming, not the other way around.

Still, if Zero wants to do something about carbon dioxide emissions, (no matter how beside the point they may be), he needs to figure out how to persuade China and India to stop building coal-fired power plants. The two countries combined are about to eclipse the U.S. for leadership in C02 emissions and are on pace to double their output by 2025.

We are the only country in the world stupid enough to agree to any of this crap and then actually penalize our own citizens and ruin our economy in the process.

Every Mediacrat in Washington who votes for C&T should be skinned alive.

A couple years back the wife and I took the kids to The Big Island on Hawaii for a few days hiking at ">http://www.volcanogallery.com/hawaii.htm"> the Kilauea Volcano. Walking through the jungle and then down across one of the lava domes the girls were complaining about the gazillions of bugs crawling all over them, and we started laughing because we both suddenly realized what a relief it was not having to be constantly on the alert for something jumping out of the underbrush to eat us. It was a great laugh, so we were a tad unsympathetic. Or in modern parlance, Bad Parents:(

GCM (global circulation models) of climate are, in essence, the only argument for AGW theory (nothing else – geological or current correlation of CO2/temperature, let alone antropogenic CO2 emissions/warming correlation, or physical forecast from first principles, do not cut it).

But here is the rub. GCM are in essence globally gridded weather forecast models. And their predictive power is limited currently to about 5 days. Due to mathematically proved chaotic nature of weather (small changes in initial boundary conditions lead to exponentially mounting dispersion over couple of days), weather forecast models physically can not produce right forecast over about 10 days period.

Now, what AGW modelers are doing. They run fudged weather forecast models for thousands of runs, and average dozens of fudged models into one AGW-prone prediction. One problem, thought. It is mathematically proven in case of chaotic systems that sum of wrong particulate forecasts can not produce right picture.

It is like trying to predict S&P500 based on faulty forecast of price of all 500 of its components. Does not work in finance, does not work in engineering, does not work in any bforecasting – and it is formally mathematically proven that such approach could not work. But it does work to impress professional law-educated illiterate morons of our governments.

So, the goverment says it can control the climate. Pray tell, how will taking money from me and giving it to the ecocrazies do that? We are deep in debt, The world is going to hell in a hand basket and all these idiots in washington can think about is how to screw us further. Vote them all out.

As others have pointed out, there's no law against it. But a more likely scenario is that it stagnates through 2010, with the unemployment rate remaining up in the 9-10 percent range. That will be bad for Obama and the Dems. No one seems to take note of the fact that Japan tried all this stimulus nonsense in the late 90s and stagnated for years.

As for the Republicans, they are at risk of becoming on the national level like the party in New York state: Indistinguishable from the Democrats, standing for nothing other than wanting their share of the spoils of office. The watershed moment in New York was back in 1990 when they nominated some moderate whose name I can't even remember to run against Cuomo instead of a the dynamic Herb London. (London ran on the Conservative ticket and got almost as many votes as the Republican.) What some Repubs are doing to Palin is reminiscent of how they stabbed London in the back.

See, good luck with that. Folks LIKE Pelosi, and Ried, and Boxer, and Schumer, and Markey, and Wexler. What happens is you vote your guy out for "change" and they stay in and get even more seniority over your new guy.

But Jimmy, who could stand the charisma of Pierre Rinfret, former Fed official. Is it scary I know that name without googling.
That his mediocrity was so overwhelming it was noteworthy. At least in Massachussets they had a contest with BU President John Silber, against premature FrumPublican William Weld. There are still signs of life down here, but the blancmanges seem to be taking over nonetheless

I am sure it's not the country shifting. As many have suggested, I think it's just lack of leadership. Reagan came along in 1976 and saved the party, even though he didn't get the nomination that year. Maybe Palin could be that leader, but she has some vulnerabilities that Reagan did not. Or maybe it's just that the MSM is just more shameless in its partnership with the Democratic party than it was 30 years ago.

A recapitulation of my assertion that it is entirely possible for the economy to bottom and then lurch sideways until the Dems are removed:

Stocks lost ground early Friday after the Commerce Department said personal spending, incomes and savings all rose in May. What troubled investors was that the savings rate soared to 6.9 percent, a 15-year high, while spending rose by a modest 0.3 percent.

I wonder if "save to save America" would have any power as a political slogan? (If you jump in front of a parade, aren't you "leading" it?)

So private wages were off by 1800 %, manufacturing payrolls was off by 200% Government payrolls are down 50%? Goods producing payrolls maybe 5%, how can there
be such an imbalance, or is it more funemployment on the way.

--Save to Save is a great idea, Rick and then we can tack on a Turn Off the TV campaign to that.--

Good idea, clarice.
We could advocate replacing the TV with one of those underpowered, twisty, flourescent light bulb thingies.
We'd still have a dim bulb to look at, it just wouldn't talk, like Chris Matthews or Brian Willimas.

when referring to bear scat, are you really referring to the theme of this thread?

The PV market will do the same here in the States as it did in Spain. Big ramp up to a peak, and then a crash. The grid can only take @ 15% renewable for various reasons. It sounds really good to politicians, but they will have moved on by that point and will not be held responsible.

How about a Constitutional amendment to make politicians accountable for the laws they pass?

Thank you - I had not revisited the thread. Cathy is correct, as usual. I noted that the BEA is going to their "new, improved" statistical modeling with the August 4th report. I'm sure we'll be seeing some outstanding results from the Ogabe Regime's magnificent actions to date.

It really makes me want to sell everything and move to Costa Rica as soon as possible invest based upon the advice of a well respected Wall Street firm with good connections to the regime.

The percentage of the electorate calling themselves conservative is at an all-time high of 41(!) percent. Liberals = 21%, which is about two points higher than a couple of years ago, but nowhere near a record. More members of the Muddle are moving from moderate to conservative.

These idiots in Washington are the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Worst of all, I guess, they are so profoundly stupid that they don't even realize how far out of step with the country they are.

Think "herding cats", and not particularly bright ones. May every Jack has his Jill. Still Don't have a date?
There is a hot place ---BlackWhiteConnect-com ---Best interracial dating site in the world! It's where diversely ethnic singles meet new friends, make great dates, and build lasting interracial relationships. No matter you are looking for a NSA or serious relationship, you'll have check it out.

I'm sure al-AP or al-Reuters could stick an arbitrary "less than expected" in front of any of those, and the muddle will see fields of bright green, and will wonder once again how we ever survived without The Won.

Maybe Palin could be that leader, but she has some vulnerabilities that Reagan did not.

Such as?

I think she's not as adept an impromptu speaker as Reagan was, and allowed herself to get sandbagged by Couric and Gibson. With the media on attack alert, the slightest verbal miscue is going to travel around the world in 3 seconds. She is also perceived (however unfairly) as somewhat provincial and inexperienced. A hostile media went after Reagan too, but they couldn't even try to allege those things.

Well, if the warming doesn't fit the C02 model, it's a little hard to say any of it is human-produced. We know the earth warmed at the beginning of the 20th century before the automobile took off, etc. The models are filled with noise and hooey; they are so far from being back-testable as to render them utterly meaningless. Moreover, a far more reasonable explanation for the relationship between warming and CO2 is the reverse of Hansen's: CO2 rises as a result of warming, not the other way around.

Right. The slope of temperature rise between 1910 and 1940 in the US data is almost the same as the rise between 1980 and 1998.

And what caused the leveling off/slight cooling between 1940-1980? Nobody can credibly explain it. Actually, above-ground nuke testing is the best one I've heard although others say it was due to the clean air act wiping out low level pollution and allowing more solar radiation. Either way, if the mid-20th century cooling is subtracted out it leaves a much more moderate rise over the past 100 years, as one might expect when exiting a little ice-age.

Anybody having problems posting to this thread? I posted two other items re: this thread and when I came back, I noticed they are no longer there. Weird. Both posts were contemporary to the discussion. Anyone?

I've noticed my comments do not come through if I post on the current page I'm reading rather than the last page of comments.

That's odd. What I see if I am on other than the last page:

1) If the page knows that it is not the last page (there is an ">>" link at the bottom), then I can post just fine. Of course my post appears on the end of whatever the last page is at the time that I post.

2) If the page I am on thinks that it is the last page when it's not, then it gives me the error message about not being able to post when I hit the post button. If I hit refresh at that point, the ">>" appears, and then I can post after the refresh finishes.

Yes, McLoud, I think the general warming trend is the recovery from the Little Ice Age and a very important question with a completely unknown answer is whether the current deep slumber of the sun presages a reversal of that recovery and the start of another 'little' ice age of a few decades or centuries of cooling.

Tsonis et al at the Univ. of Wisc @ Milwaukee have a paper showing the wobbles around the general rising temperature trend to depend upon the coupling and uncoupling of several natural cycles, predominately oceanic oscillations and strongest of them the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which has an approx. 60 year cycle with alternating cooling and warming phases. We've just entered the cooling phase of that oscillation.

What I've discerned is what else I've been doing on my computer that is memory intensive.
If the cache is full from other activities I have problems with my browser and bad things can and do happen. Don't know if my diagnosis is even close to being accurate but that's the furtherest my database goes:)

glasater, some programs are foolish about how they use memory - MS Word, MS Explorer... and, I think Firefox has whaat is called a memory leak -- not returning unused memory to be reused. Stuff slows the computer down if you don't stop and restart the programs.

Another thing Firefox does is start a disk and CPU intensive routine of some unknown purpose that slows things down every once in a while.

Best to have at least 2 GB of RAM, restart programs every week or so, and not have too big a cache.

The other thing with firefox is that if you save and quit it saves state really well. I've usually got 50 tabs open across 5-10 windows. (hmmm... ADD anyone?) So quit and restart isn't particularly inconvenient.

I recently installed Safari 4--just beautiful graphics the trademark of Apple--and after some "burps" it seems to be working pretty well.

I have 4 g's of ram on a Macbook pro so one wouldn't think memory would be much of a problem.
I don't use Firefox at all but do have it on an older computer as a backup of sorts.

I took to heart Cathyf's solution of keeping windows with a bunch of tabs going which also gets the cookies built up tremendously and can cause a problem ISTM. So periodically I go in and dump those and that is a help. Apple can keep track of passwords in a separate place so rebuilding is not a problem.
And after any Apple software update I always go in and update permissions which seems to put things in their proper places.

Now I'm hoping Cathyf gets the twitter bug and helps me with her thoughts on how to organize that venue:-)

... predominately oceanic oscillations and strongest of them the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which has an approx. 60 year cycle with alternating cooling and warming phases. We've just entered the cooling phase of that oscillation

Which doesn't explain why global temps have leveled off, IOW, there is a lot more we don't know, none of which warrants the current political alarmism. But as they say, never let a good crisis go to waste.